


Death and the Mare

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 18:43:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts





	Death and the Mare

  


She’s six winters gone when Death takes her.  

Barn-warm and there’s hay left close enough to eat, no grain and she’d like that more. But she smells it far off, past the wood, reeking of river filth and more danger under it. The ‘more’ of Death, which she doesn’t know yet, and it creeps, like rot in a hoof, which she does know. Cooling blood, metal-rich on the ground somewhere near. Near enough to smell.  Her ears twisting, flicking, can’t find the where of it as it comes.  The barn isn’t safe. She thinks of her man in the house. Neighs. Again and louder, the cat runs off through a crack.  Nothing’s safe except being gone. When the door opens she’ll run, fly, if it opens. Hounds bay.  Flicking, turning her ears.  Sounds like darkness, sounds like fire, sounds like the sky breaking.

She jerks the rope, tears the wood. Under her hooves the ground trembles and squirms to warn. Late, it’s too late. Death throws open the door. Moonlight pain. She reels, kicks, eyes rolling hard to see, to flee, but there’s no where.  No where but the reins. Not-hands in her mane.  This weight is no man’s, it’s sickness in her bones.  But the ground has stopped, and her heart, too.  She’d been a strong thing, a breeze-blooded and grass-loving one. Death makes her nothing now, and she snorts, moans, scenting the change of her flesh.

A mare, just a mare with six seasons of frost in her nose.  She’s black-eyed no more.  She’ll foal no more.  The bit is hot and sears her tongue. She tastes the last of her teeth. Body burned away, filling up with ash and ache, and they’re joined in that smell. Rot and force. Master.  She’s red-blind and her skin is a terror, wrongly white, consumed.  

Not taken but stolen.  

Death steals her into an endless winter.  She runs for Hell.


End file.
